All Blog Posts Tagged 'empathy' (6)

The naturalist understanding of morality asserts that we have evolved empathy as an impetus to cooperation. Combined with personal experience, empathy leads most of us to a "Golden Rule" sense of morality. From experience, I know what hurts me: with empathy, I know the same things likely hurt you too. Experience and empathy is all we need to decide most moral matters. "Do unto…

Nature is, as Alfred Lord Tennyson said, “red in tooth and claw”. It has no morals. Morality is a human construct that usually reflects our social norms. As such, morality is formed by an amalgam of influences from family, religion, culture, evolution and the arts. This amalgam of influences varies from person to person and is relative to our exposure to, and experience with, these influences.

Almost half the human race subscribes to a religion that claims morality is objective… Continue

As I will argue, below, if a prerequisite of “true” Christianity is to follow Jesus, then nobody is a true Christian. The very reason for this also reveals our tacit acknowledgement that religious morality is subordinated to our innate human morality.

Nobody in their right mind, Christian or not, would fully obey Jesus. Do you know any Christians who abandon their worldly goods and rely on God to feed, clothe and shelter them? Of course not! But that's what Jesus…

Human beings have a powerful sense of free will, and in at least one important sense, they are responsible for their actions. Despite this, however, the concept of free will as it is commonly understood is baseless and incoherent. It is certainly true, of course, that when beings make choices, it feels to them as though a variety of outcomes are possible. In fact, however, only the actual outcome was ever really a possibility. For a different choice to have been… Continue

These are the basic premises intended to define Beingism. Beyond the content of the text here, Beingists may come to a variety of different conclusions. Other texts on this site, such as the essays, blog posts, and message board postings, may contain ideas widely shared among Beingists, though this cannot necessarily be… Continue